Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

The contact broke. Folio found himself sprawled on the floor, Mingus Black holding him by his shoulders. They were both shivering.

“Sherman’s dead,” Folio said.

“Mind if I share your bed, com?” Mingus asked Folio.

To shake off the nerves they had watched a very good matchup of Fera Jones against Mithitar the Mad Mongolian on the vid. The Mongolian had an interesting circular style of boxing, but he couldn’t deal with the amazon’s power. After six rounds Mithitar’s buzz-saw-like attacks had slowed enough for her logjam jab to take control; he was asprawl in the middle of the ring by the end of round eight.

“What?” Folio asked.

“Just need to lie next to somebody. That’s all. It ain’t sex.”

Folio sighed. He knew the trauma of ex-Backgrounders, especially those who’d spent their entire lives underground. They feared the loneliness of a full-size room.

“Just keep your pants on,” he said.

Folio awoke on a small blue island adrift in a scarlet sea. The sky was pink and yellow. Violet pelicans soared on the wind above him. Folio was completely aware that this place was a dream provided by his eye. It was an attempt to ease his tension, but as usual, in these hard times the mechanical eye was at war with Johnson’s troubled unconscious. He supposed that the eye had been trying to create a Caribbean island but was disrupted in color and size by Folio’s own fears.

There was a disruption in the water. Somebody was swimming toward his islet. When she climbed out of the water he could see that it was the young woman from the Crystal Bar. Immediately he felt a powerful erection.

“Is that for me?” Paradise asked.

“Every inch.”

“Keep it hard like that for me, baby,” she said. “But we can’t do anything yet.”

“Why not?”

“You have to keep out of trouble.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“That’s just the problem.”

“What?”

“I’m not important but you still want me. Your dick wants me. He can’t help himself but you have to hold it back.”

“Who are you?”

“Paradise.”

“Are you from the eye?”

“I met you today, at the bar.”

“But where are you from in my mind?”

“I’m your stupid side. You’re my fool.”

Folio felt his erection straining and suddenly he wondered if it wasn’t Mingus trying to be more than friendly.

The detective pulled himself awake and turned angrily toward his bedmate.

Mingus’s eyes were wide open, his throat cut from jawbone to jawbone.

With a heavy sigh Folio rose out of bed and switched on the vidphone.

“What was your relationship to the deceased?” the man’s voice asked.

“We were both natural-born human beings as far as I know,” Folio replied.

He was gazing into a mirror, in a room composed entirely of mirrors — floors, ceilings, and walls — everything was a bright reflective surface.

“This is murder we’re talking about here, Johnson. It’s no joke.”

“I’m not joking,” Folio said to a thousand thousand images of himself. “I met Mingus because I was told by a man named Spellman that a group of friends were dying mysteriously. Spellman wanted me to find out if it was some kinda conspiracy, and if so, who was the perpetrator. I was talking to Black about that.”

“In bed?”

“No. We were sleepin’ in bed. At least I was. He was dyin’ — I guess.”

“Who else died?” a woman’s voice asked.

Folio reeled off the long list, including the sixer he had killed.

“Seven murders and you didn’t report it?”

“I did,” Folio replied. “I told Aldo Thorpe.”

There was a moment of silence in the infinite field of himself. Johnson’s baby finger could not transmit or receive from the heart of Police Central but the memory chips still held more information than the UN’s Library of Earth. Instead of giving in to the dizziness of the tilting images he began a restructuring routine of the images of Azuma Sherman as he died.

The young man was wide-eyed with fear and pain after his leg was disintegrated under him. He stared right into the lens that transmitted the execution to Folio’s eye. He cropped out the left eye and expanded the block of that image. He increased the image until there was a face, reflected in the pupil, a face unknown to Folio or his electronic memories. It was the wide white visage of a man who hadn’t shaved in two days or more. It was an evil face, a gleeful image. He was smiling. Folio imagined the rank breath. The man wore an ocular camera over his left eye; nothing special. Nothing that would explain where he had gotten the protocols to transmit directly to Folio’s eye.

“Who were the other members of this organization?” the male interrogator asked. “The ones that survive.”

“Leonard Li, Brenton Thyme, and Fonti Timmerman. And my client, of course, Charles Spellman.”

Another spate of silence ensued.

Folio had another idea. He searched his synthetic memory, but the data was unavailable without his transmitter.

“All dead,” the woman said.

“Accidental or murder?”

“They were assassinated.”

“That’s some hard luck.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” the masculine voice said.

“Are you?”

“It was your job to protect them, you say.”

“I said no such a thing. I said that Spellman hired me to find out why they were being killed and by whom.”

“Where is Charles Spellman?”

“OC. I don’t know where.”

“You know nothing?”

“I didn’t say that. I said that Spellman’s off-continent. I don’t know who’s been killin’ his friends but I do know that it’s too much of a coincidence for it to be anything but a conspiracy.”

“We are allowed by law to administer a level-two pain injection if we believe that you are lying.”

“Check my med files,” Folio said.

“A Macso injunction against invasive interrogation,” the female voice said. Folio doubted she’d meant him to hear those words.

“You got all bases covered, huh?” the man said.

“Enough to stay in the game.”

Folio got back to Hallwell’s China Diner at eight fifteen in the morning. D’or was behind the counter. Three lady latenighters were eating fried rice and frogs’ legs trying to garner enough strength to make it through the day without getting thrown off the cycle.

“Hey, Johnson,” D’or said, and he knew there was trouble. D’or saying Johnson was a code meaning that his dick was exposed.

Folio looked around the small restaurant. The lavender-haired partygirls didn’t seem to see a problem.

D’or moved close enough to whisper, “She’s downstairs. Spread out two meters just for an intro.”

“Cash credit?”

“Yessir.”

The tiny underroom of China Diner was dark and damp, with a ceiling barely high enough for Folio to stand up straight. She was sitting in an ancient wooden chair looking as if she were receiving infection from every breath. She wore a gray dress of real wool and a light gray shawl that had to be silk. Folio placed her age at mid-forties, but with the recent advances in dermal surgery she could have been sixty and no one would know.

“You were looking for me, ma’am?” Folio asked.

He reached out in greeting. She clasped her hands together and moved her shoulders in a defensive manner.

“Are you the detective?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I am Liliane Spellman.”

“Charles Spellman’s mother?”

“No. I’m Mylo’s mother.” There was no trace of tears or sorrow on her face, but her blood pressure was extremely high and her nervous system was playing a dirge.